Hydrogen vehicles offer a whole new take on motoring
DRIVING a hydrogen car is like – well – driving a car. Except it’s not.
Everything is so incredibly precise. The reaction is immediate. When you accelerate or brake it’s like a switch has just suddenly been flicked. Bang! You go. Bang! You stop.
And there’s no handbrake, which is just totally weird. But I guess it doesn’t need one because when you turn it off it’s just, well, off. It ain’t going anywhere. Inside, the dashboard looks more like a video game screen.
It gives you real time animation of pretty much everything the engine is doing.
And the kicker is it even gives you real-time calculations of how much you’ve purified the air.
Yes, not only does the Nexo not produce any emissions of it own, it actually filters the air it sucks in and then spits it out even cleaner.
The computer then tells you how many humans you’ve helped to breathe as a result.
And the only other output it has is water that you can drink.
It is, in other words, the smuggest car ever invented.
And it’s quiet. Almost too quiet … I mean that literally.
We were driving along a shared road/walking track and would overtake pedestrians without them even knowing we were there.
A helpful car guru told me they had to add an artificial engine sound so as not to freak people out – like the fake crowd noise at a Covid football game. I’m still not sure if he was joking or not.
In other words it’s a car stripped of everything you associate with a car except for speed. It’s pure movement in a beautiful box.
Driving my dear old 2008 LPG Falcon on the way home suddenly felt more like piloting a barge.
But at least I was doing it with someone I loved.